


Silhouette Over Innsmouth

by chicagoartnerd



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Body Horror, F/M, Gen, Kink Meme, Lovecraftian, Psychological Horror, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-21
Updated: 2013-06-21
Packaged: 2017-12-15 13:24:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/850029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicagoartnerd/pseuds/chicagoartnerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unlike every one else her age Abigail doesn't want to leave the dying town of Innsmouth. There's just something about it that calls to her. It calls to others as well. In their dreams and in their waking nightmares. Will and Hannibal follow those nightmares straight to their source. The little New England town by the sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silhouette Over Innsmouth

**Author's Note:**

> I am going to write way more Hannibal fic because this is so fun to do. This is from the Lovecraft prompt on the Hannibal Kink meme.

She liked the ocean.

Her house had a widow’s walk that she would sit up and read on. The actual beach was a dull, dank, and chilly affair that her mother refused to visit often. But Abigail felt more comfort staring out at the black and green tarnished waves in between the pages of Virginia Wolfe than inside staring at a computer screen.

 

Her mother grumbled that she got her love of the water from her father who was a fisherman and out on the water more days than he was on land. They rarely saw him even though most non-commercial fishing in New England was all but dead. But for some reason the dreary coast off Innsmouth was always teeming with fish willing to jump from the depths into your nets.

Abigail wondered what was so terrible about living in the deeps that they would rather die in a net than stay down there.

She was starting to empathize with the fish. With her mother constantly telling her how to act, what to wear, when and where she couldn’t go. Home life was as suffocating as brackish bleak water. It was the weekend jaunts on her father’s small schooner into the waves that made her week.

They would fish together in companionable silence, setting traps and hauling nets. He taught her how to bait a line and eventually how to gut and skin all manner of fish and crustacean.  The few friends she had thought it was weird that she enjoyed being out on the boat with her dad. Most of them were obsessed with their “I” devices and the link to the internet it brought them. The idea of fishing where there was nothing but water and sky seemed positively primitive to them.

Abigail knew her way around the web as well as any one her age but for some reason books and the landscape of shadowy Innsmouth held her attention for much longer.  

So much so she had applied for a job at the Innsmouth Historical Society over the summer. She was the only person under fifty-five working there but she loved it. The smell of old census records and farmer’s almanacs, hundreds of years of history, the lives and deaths of thousands of sailors, it was intensely fascinating.  

She had always loved literature and history. Abigail had already applied for colleges that had good history programs. Eventually she wanted to become a Historian that focused on New England, specifically Innsmouth, and the original colonization and development of the area. There was so much she didn’t know about the town that seemed to be hiding in plain sight in the history museum.

And yet every one she asked about Obed Marsh the older employees told her nothing or fearfully averted their eyes and told her to leave well enough alone. He was one of richest men in the New England Shipping industry and had brought wealth and prosperity to Innsmouth that much was publically available, yet outside of that little was known about him.

The internet was full of rumors of some sort of Mason-like cult, and even darker conspiracies about human sacrifices to evil and ancient entities. But it was all so convoluted she wasn’t sure where myth and legend were hiding the truth or even if there was any truth left there at all. So she stuck to what she could read in the old weathered tomes, in the documents in the basement of the small historical society offices in quiet downtown Innsmouth.

The summer was passing leisurely and while all of her friends were gearing up to go to college and flee the tiny town she was almost dreading it. Her father hadn’t been happy when she had applied at Berkley, in fact he had been furious. Even colleges close to Massachusetts seemed to set him off. Her mother was dead set on her getting a college degree and doing better than either of them ever did in the world. But her father didn’t seem to want her to leave the small hamlet. Innsmouth was barely a grain of salt on the map of the world and yet she loved it here. There was something old about it that other parts of New England had but that smelled particularly potent in Innsmouth.  

So unlike other graduating high-schoolers Abigail wasn't looking forward to the end of summer and the end of her childhood in her small brine encrusted snow globe.

* * *

 

 

The last couple days had been surreally green, the sky and the sea churning froth and foam in sickly spirals. Even the light from the sun was a ghostly green as the wind blew spindly grey and black cloud fingers across the overcast sky.

Her bike had wobbled dangerously on her ride to pick up her afternoon shift at the Historical Society. And what had been simply ominous weather broke out into a full-blown storm as she ran to shove her bike inside the back office. The lights flickered as she shut the door against the now howling wind.  July was not usually storm season.

As she unlocked the door to the empty collection room she vaguely lamented global climate change. But as lightning bloomed in the doorway she jumped at the crack of thunder that shook the glass cases and rattled her teeth.  The silhouette of two men appeared in the doorway to the front entrance and when one tugged violently it flew open with hollow bang.

Lightning struck again and she was blinded by it.

The after image of the two men against the churning green sky was nightmare fuel. It was like all the light of the smaller more tasseled one was being impaled, sucked, rent, and devoured by the impeccably dressed one next to him. She couldn’t actually see the full form of the shape of him, it was like even trying hurt her eyes so much they might go blind and roll bloodily from her head.

Abigail shielded her eyes from them and tried to step back as the next knell of the thunder cracked the boards of the museum beneath her feet. She looked up in time to see the shorter more disheveled man cram the door shut against the gale but the other man was barely visible. The glass of multiple exhibits and the unnatural light from outside was distorting flickers and glimpses of him between the cases.

“Sorry to barge in here but the storm was getting so bad we couldn’t see the narrow road.”

Abigail turned to address the man who had shut the door but out of the corner of her eyes she felt the attention of the other man stab into her side,

“It’s alright. It’s free to the public and you are here during operating hours. Also I’ve never seen a storm like this during this time of year. Do you suppose it’s part of global warming?”

She avoided making eye contact with the inscrutable man and instead desperately searched for the shaggy man’s eye contact. It was like he was purposefully avoiding looking at her full on, afraid of what he would see. So instead she watched him clean his rain dotted glasses in the half dark of the museum.

“Did you just get in? All the lights are off.”

She stiffened as his voice washed over her like a wave of something powerful and metallic, molten copper or blood.

“Yes. I had a bit of trouble on my bike getting here in the storm.”

Abigail dreaded looking at him but turned to address the man merely steps away from her left. He was taller than the other man, dressed in a perfectly tailored white suite with pressed salmon dress shirt. His face was half-smiling at her but it was the face of some great predator from thousands of years past, the reason why her ancestors were afraid of the dark.

It was his eyes that truly terrified her; there was no light, no warmth, only the death of humanity over the millennia trapped there and screaming. She gasped at the feeling of paralyzing fear and the jolt of something else she hadn’t felt since she had fallen violently in love with horror novels in the eighth grade.

Abigail felt the fiery passionate desire to devour that evil darkness, to roll in it and let it come inside her. He breathed in her gasp of terror like it was the scent of a finely cooked dinner and smiled that cat-like half smile again.

“The weather forcast for today didn’t mention any sort of severe weather so it hit us a bit out of the blue I guess. I’m Will Graham and this is my associate Doctor Hannibal Lecter.”

It was like all the disjointed gears in the world had started to sluggishly grind to life, that name was the trigger and all who uttered it would be crushed beneath the machinations of ancient wheels.

She had to stop and pinch her arms just to make sure she hadn’t fallen asleep back in the sunroom of her old house. These thoughts and the words that whispered along their edges, this undeniable sense of dread wasn’t something she usually felt or thought.

There was madness prevalent in her small town. The people most prone to it, the dreamers and the artists, the creative and people who could see what others couldn’t had disappeared into the state mental hospital in droves.

They created hideous sculptures of many eyed creeping things, gelatinous, infinite and terrible, wrote their neurosis in books and poetry, drew paintings that would peel the flesh from your face with your own fingers. But nobody much had that problem any more, all the dreamers had left Innsmouth.

The only reason she knew of it was the library and the hall of records she was privy to as the Historical Society's intern. The horrible thought that she was the next patient, the next young girl to disappear in a haze of medication and white walls was almost worse than that man’s smile. Almost.

“As soon as this storm lets up Will and I will be out of your hair. Until then you wouldn’t happen to have an electric kettle or hot plate would you?”

They did in the back but she really didn’t want to invite either of these men back there with her. Her higher mind scolded her for being impolite and silly but the lower branches were full of monkeys screeching warnings and throwing stones.

“We don’t I’m afraid but I can at least turn on the lights.”

As soon as she darted away to flick the switches they flickered on by themselves in a surge and then went dead. Abigail whipped around just in time to see the vile flash of pleasure leave Hannibal Lecter’s mouth.

The other man, Will seemed slightly dismayed but moved in closer to the two of them anyway.

“What brings you two to town? Or are you just passing through on your way some where for a summer vacation?”

That half smile was back as Hannibal leisurely leaned against the case containing old fishing nets and historic pulleys,

“No Innsmouth is our destination. We’re actually here investigating some serial murders that have been occurring in New England.”

Her eyes went wide with shock but the dread doubled in her throat and stomach,

“Well there isn’t any one who would do anything like that here. Every body knows every one else. It’s a small quiet fishing village, no one would be able to do something like that without us noticing.”

Will glared at Hannibal,

“Should we really be telling some random person in Innsmouth about our investigation _Doctor_ Lecter?”

Hannibal shrugged and slunk closer to her making her take a step back into a case and pinning her there,

“The man we would like to question is named Garret Jacob Hobbs. Since you know every one in Innsmouth intimately would you happen to know where we can find him after this storm abates?”

She froze. That was her father they were looking for, they thought he had been killing God knows how many people up and down the coast.

Hannibal knew who she was, in that moment she was certain.

Her rational high brain fainted away at the impossible and her lower thought processes kicked into high gear,

“I have to go to the restroom excuse me!”

She turned and ran, ran towards the back and out the only door back there.

Ran into the storm as the sky pelted her with rain and heavy wind. It was no longer a violent green but a hateful pitch black, like his laughing eyes. She forgot her bike and went tearing down the ridge of sand the entire village was mired on in the middle of the Manuxet River and the mouth of the Atlantic ocean.

She knew her father would be at their neighborhood's pier waiting for her there.

Abigail didn’t care any more and ran blinded and tossed around by storm, fighting her way to the only person who had loved her for being herself.  When she got there her eyes were burning hot and all her exposed skin felt like it had been through a rock polisher.

He was there in his black rain slicker on the deck looking out into the tumultuous sea.

She fought her way onto to the dock and called out to him but her voice was ripped from her mouth and tossed out soundlessly over the tempest. Her father turned to her like he had heard he say his name and smiled widely at her approaching. When she climbed up the pitching gangplank onto the deck she almost threw up. The ship was rocking erratically but that wasn’t what churned her insides.

Strewn across the deck was blood and chum but it wasn’t the fine bloody mess of the fish innards it usually was, there were blue eyes and fingers and toes with pretty red manicures, and wads of scalps with the blonde hair still sticking up pell-mell from them. One large chunk was a hand missing all the fingers except the wedding ring one which had her mother’s dull single diamond band. There were no words so she turned to him with horrified pleading eyes as he approached her carefully,

“I did it all for you Abigail. To protect you. I couldn’t just let them have you. You’re mine don’t you see?”

She started to shake her head no, or in disbelief, but it didn’t matter because he grabbed her embracing her hard and dragging his cold bowie knife across her throat.

There was pain and light, a blinding flash of intense ozone ripe air and pure white light. Then there was the hot choking of blood from her new second mouth. No words just drowning in hot salty misery.

Then silence. The storm was gone and there was nothing but the soothing black lull of empty water.

* * *

 

 

When she awoke it was to the rhythmic beat of a hospital heart monitor. Abigail turned and rustled the hand of some one seated in the chair next to her bed. She tensed but then stopped when she saw it was the poorly dressed man Will Graham. Some one out of her sight moved and she turned too fast to face them and almost passed out. The woman steadied her and smiled genuinely,

“It’s okay. You’re safe now Abigail.”

She saw his shadow darken the mesh window on the doorway and knew that was the worst kind of lie.

The kind that the person speaking it believed to be the truth because they didn’t know any better.

“You’re awake? How are you feeling? I mean aside from being slashed. That would make any one feel shitty.”

The woman eyed Will carefully and he shut his mouth with a click,

“I’m Doctor Alana Bloom and as you already know this is Doctor William Graham. What he meant is how are you doing? Any pain? Numbness? Trouble breathing?”

She shook her head carefully no but cringed at the deep twinge in sent through it. Alana looked concerned and then he opened the door and ghosted in, impeccably dressed in a blue suit and vest with mauve dress shirt, the devil himself.

“Abigail was just telling us how she felt. I think three doctors might be too many for that just now though.”

Alana addressed Hannibal easily but he took a careful seat at the foot of her bed anyway.

“Can you tell us what you remember Abigail. There is a detective waiting down the hall who wants to have some words with you but we told him it might be better to speak to us.”

Alana placed a comforting hand on her shoulder but when she flinched under it she removed it.

“I was working at the museum and there was a horrible storm. Everything else is like a horrible nightmare. There was blood and my father he, he killed my mother and then tried to kill me.”

She started shaking and all of them except Hannibal backed away to give her some space.

It was mostly true, everything in her memory was like flashes of lightning but some things that they would have thought her insane for saying were more clear than what they believed to be the truth.

There was no rational explanation but she knew the man at the foot of her bed wasn’t a man but something terrible in a well-tailored man-suit.

“We’re sorry to poke at fresh wounds but we need to know everything that happened after you fled the Historical Museum Abigail.”

He met her eyes and there was a playful glee there, she wanted to sink her teeth into them and pop them like grapes. She stopped the snarl from her lips just in time and tried not to think too hard on where that thought had come from,

“I don’t remember much except finding my father on his boat and, all the blood and body parts. Please I’m tired can we do this later.”

Alana nodded vigorously and motioned for Hannibal and Will to follow her out of the room,

“Sure thing. Get some more rest and we’ll continue this tomorrow morning.”

The dread that had disappeared into the black emptiness of drug-induced sleep was back and now nothing could take it away. She lay awake in mild pain and terror into the night waiting for him to come back. And when he did she was sitting up stiffly waiting for him.

“What are you?”

He shut the door and his white teeth sparked in the half-dark the street lights were casting through the cheap hospital blinds.

“I have been give many names by many people but none of them matter in the grand scheme of the universe. You on the other hand have had one name through the ages, feared and revered and worshipped.”

Abigail blanched and couldn’t swallow with her dry throat. He offered her a poured cup of water and when their fingers met it was like touching a dead, hollow huskcreature. She downed it quickly and inched farther up her bed from him,

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

That greasy smirk was back and she wasn’t sure how the humans around him didn’t gag at his mere presence,

“That’s a bit of surprise considering who and what your father was. Are you telling me he killed all of those pretty little girls of his own accord and not to feed you and your children?”

She recoiled and he chuckled softly,

“You are still Abigail then. I suppose in that regard he did succeed with his sacrifices. But for how much longer now that’s he’s dead only time will tell. Personally I like you better this way. Innocent.”

She tried to inch away but he was pinning her to the mattress at the hip with one unnaturally strong arm, the other stroking up and down her thigh,

“Stop it. Please.”

He removed his arm holding her slowly and used it to wipe away the hot tears that were now streaming down her cheeks. His voice was almost gentle,

“I can’t sweet one. All of this started eons before you and this entire planet was even a mote in the cosmos.”

She sobbed and he took her in his arms tightly holding her while she shook. But there was really no comfort there, only more creeping foreboding,

“Are you the devil?”

He pulled away to face her, his eyes burning in the darkness,

“I am what the devil aspires to be child. I am older, wiser, and more malevolent than any God your people have known. And so are you. Some who are experts on the subject would argue you are something greater than myself. But we shall see won’t we.”

Her neck and arms went to clammy flesh as she went limp against him,

“Can I stop it from happening? From losing myself to whatever it is that is inside me.”

He sat up and away from her and looked through the walls into the quiet night outside,

“Perhaps. Your father, just one man, has already cheated them of you for several years now. There might be a way for you to continue his work. Would it be worth it though Abigail? Maintaining control of your body and mind by committing unspeakable acts on innocents like yourself.”

She didn’t have the answer to that. There was no correct answer.

Abigail wasn’t perfect and she was certainly no saint. But killing people, sacrificing them as her father had to some unseen horrorterror in the ocean to prolong her petty human life didn’t seem right either.

If she gave herself over to them entirely, became an even worse creature than the one in the person-suit before her, what would she be damning the entire world to?

“You said you don’t know how much longer whatever my father was doing to stop them will hold them off right? But if you had to guess how many days, weeks?”

He inclined his head vaguely,

“I couldn’t say for certain but due to the nature of the lunar cycle during your father’s killing sprees I would say until the next new moon, a week at most.”

She gagged on the water in her stomach as it turned to acid,

“And then what? I die? I go to sleep and wake up a monster?”

This time he turned to face her,

“No. You become a God. The Mother. The destroyer far more beautiful than any woman ever born and more terrible than any child’s nightmare or mans living terror. To be honest I envy you. I was cast out of the inner circle long ago and now I serve the forgotten ones, the outer ring of idiot gods who blasphemed against you so many eons ago.”

“ You are an Old One, unfathomable and pristine in pedigree. We play at your power. We desire to be you and to destroy you. I desire.”

He stroked her hair from her scalp down to the tips and leaned in closer as she shivered but didn’t pull away,

“Perhaps we could strike an accord you and I. There might be a way to save yourself and help me in turn.”

She didn’t dare close her eyes against him but she wanted to look away. The darkness writhed and bucked against his many eyes and clawed away at the back of her throat,

“Why should I trust you if you claim to be a mortal enemy?”

At this he did laugh,

“Abigail dear child you really have no other option at this point, unless of course you plan to die a martyr. If that’s the case by all means go ahead, do not let me and my petty scheming stop you.”

As awful as he was he was right. Somewhere her life had gone wrong, by his measure before she even existed, and this was her fate.

“I’ll do it. Whatever it is. I want to live.”

He leaned in,

“And what a glorious life it will be. I promise.”

And then he was gone, like a foul smell on the wind that disappeared with its turning. She was alone with her own darkness and she could feel it stir, whatever it was that her father had been killing to contain. Needless to say she did not sleep.

* * *

 

 

The next day she answered all their questions and cried. But they were only half snake-oil tears.

She wept for her life that was now dead and she wept for what would become of the world if they took her, the things her father had been feeding girls with her eyes to.

Alana suggested she be put in a foster care facility for the remainder of the summer but Will volunteered to let her stay with him till she went off to school.

Hannibal also volunteered to host her but Alana felt uneasy about both arrangements so they decided it would be best for her to stay with both of them in the same house. Will grumbled about having to move out of his very comfortable and solitary bachelor pad but in the end submitted to Hannibal once more.

The more she saw them interact the sorrier she felt for Will.

He had no idea what Hannibal was and what he was doing to him every time words slithered from his lips or his hand brushed Will’s chest. Deeper his thorny tentacles sank into the depth of his soul, twisting it and sucking it dry of sanity and grace.

Hannibal was running him roughshod into the darkness and chaos that thrived under the human veil around them.

Why no one else could see the true form of the thing before them she didn’t understand.

Even when Abigail had thought herself fully human she had been terrified of Hannibal Lecter. But Will followed his guidance eagerly and let him push and pull him into a shape more suitable for some one who loved to wear men, like beautiful three piece suits.

Their first night together she watched him prepare dinner and marveled at his precision and the beauty of the food as it practically danced over his fingertips. She wondered if banished chaos gods ever felt pleasure at anything other than destroying balance and innocence.

If so then she imagined he felt pleasure and cooking them a meal made entirely out of the flesh of terrified people whose faces ghosted screaming and stretched over the veal flank and steamed beef dumplings.

A few days ago she would have fled to retch her empty stomach into the toilet but now she was mostly ambivalent to the evil in the apron before her, and now she was a little bit hungry.

They ate a peaceful dinner and afterwards Hannibal invited them to all read with him in his study. She found a book of translated German poetry she hadn’t seen before and tried to lose herself in it like she once had. Now that her life was like something out of a dead language uttered myth Abigail couldn’t enjoy reading things like it anymore.

Her eyes kept drifting to Hannibal writing notes about various patients at his desk and every once and awhile his eyes would meet hers, sending her heart pounding in her chest and between her legs.

Around midnight Will said they better all turn in but Hannibal begged off to finish some more work. She followed him out of Hannibal’s study but turned back to nod at him before shutting the door.

Once she was sure Will wasn’t leaving his room, for the poor man never slept much, she snuck back to him in his study.

Abigail knew he was watching her as she lazily circled closer and closer to his desk while looking at the walls of perfectly ordered old books. Just the scent of the room was invigorating but his eyes ghosting over her form in pajama bottoms and a baggy t-shirt was giving her palpitations. She stopped her wandering path in front of his desk and crossed her arms defensively,

“What do I have to do?”

He leaned back in his chair and blatantly let his eyes roam all over her,

“You have to embrace the power within you and bind yourself to her. Fuse your two consciousness’s so that one is the other and both inhabit your body.”

Abigail twitched at the thought but then mumbled,

“How? Will it hurt? I don’t have to kill any one do I?”

He shook his head and smirked,

“It might hurt. I’ve never tried it myself because I never had a human vessel but I can show you how.”

He circled around almost like he was gliding towards her and pinned her against the desk. She let her legs splay open in surprise and he took the opportunity to stand between them and loom over her, pressing calloused fingertips into the back of her neck. She was breathing irregularly through her nose and it was the only noise in the silent study.

“Do you know that your fear, the chaos of your thoughts, is intoxicating?”

She felt his erection press against the inside of her thigh and couldn’t stop the heat from rushing to her face,

“Just get on with it if that is what it’s going to take.”

But her voice warbled at the last part. She had never even really kissed any one let alone had wild animalistic sex with them on a desk. He chuckled and she felt it reverberate hollowly through her ribs,

“You know I can sense your unease and terror. You cannot put on a brave face for me Abigail.”

She ground her teeth down and then pulled him flush to her body by wrapping her legs violently around his hips,

“Show me what to do then.”

This time it was his turn to show surprise but he cleared his throat and the satisfied little smile was back. He kissed her hard, his hands pushing and pulling her roughly towards him.

He let his hands wander and drag up her t-shirt to press hot calloused palms against her stomach and the sensitive sides of her waist. He kissed under her jaw and went around to her ear to lick a hot line behind it,

“Let go. Whether or not you know it you have been holding her in check all your life. If you let her loose you can bind her to your will fully.”

She was panting as he pulled back to kneel in front of her,

“I don’t know how. I can only feel her creep around the corners every once and awhile. The only time I think I ever saw her was when my father slit my throat.”

Her eyes flew wide at that and he grinned up at her deviously as he pulled down her pajama bottoms and panties in several tugs,

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you, not like that any way. Do you know the French have a word for it _la petite mort_ , the little death; it should be enough for you to at least reach for her. The rest is up to you I’m afraid.”

And then he was grabbing the back of her thighs and butt with his hands, kneading and pulling her closer to his mouth as his kissed and nipped her inner thighs. She cried out loudly when he finally placed a hot lick down her folds. It was strange and hot and felt incredible.

She had read about what it felt like to be on the receiving end of this but had never imagined it would feel quite like this. Her whole body tingled and burned from the balls of her feet up through her lungs. Abigail wondered if it would have felt less intense if the one who was going down on her wasn’t a God of death and chaos.

Every flick and nip and rumbling hum wrung more and more keens and pants from her throat to the point where she felt like she was in more places than one at once. He was doing something else other than sucking and tongue fucking her to orgasm, the entire space they had occupied had become off kilter. The world was warping around them to accommodate whatever she was about to do.

Abigail only had a second to blurrily notice this before her climax shook the entire fabric of reality tearing her and the ground beneath them asunder. She heard his pleased sigh before she sunk into something wet, cold, and writhing. The moment of ecstasy was eclipsed by surprise and terror as something with spiny sucker wrapped around her naked thighs and pulled her deeper inside itself.

Things were crawling up and under her eyelids, nostrils, and ears, digging down right below her skin and latching there as she was screaming in blood pitched tones.

Every scream and moan was muffled like the entire space they occupied was one great and terrible ocean, black and endless.

It hurt like every fiber of her muscular system was being picked apart with a sentient fine-toothed comb. She writhed in agony along with the nest of black hooked tentacles that clung and crawled inside her body. In the spiking pain there was a perverse sense of detachment. Like she existed beyond what was happening to her. It was like the yoke sliping from a egg. She fell through herself and the things the clung to her human life.

That’s where Abigail found her.

The Mother Hannibal had spoken of with hatred and reverence.

Her body was like a holy chapel with great white and gold marble, patterns in a language never spoken by human meat flaps, black eyes with the stars in them clustered like great heavy dripping pearls all over her.

She was magnificent and horrifying, an incomprehensible temple of destruction and beauty. Abigail stood before her a sliver of existence, dust ground to bits before the sight of her.

How could she ever hope the wrap her conscious will around this ancient monolith?

Hannibal had most certainly betrayed her in this. He had sent her to be destroyed by this being but why? As she dared to circle in towards the towering monstrous monument she realized that she was dreaming.

The Great Mother lay dormant and sleeping below the sea of horrorterrors writhing in oceanblack agony and ecstasy.

 That’s what he had wanted, to send her to be devoured so that Mother would sleep for another hundred thousand meaningless years.

The creature with the skin of Hannibal Lecter wrapped tightly around its slimy core wanted her to die here. She had no chance of winning but she could do what he told her to originally. Join her being with The Mother and hope to retain enough of her mind to still function. It was her only shot.

Abigail ran for the nearest gnarled root of marbled gold and sunk her hands into its steadily heart-beating flesh. She bit down and ripped off a mouthful.

It stuck directly in the back of her throat, pulsating and trying to choke her but she fought it, trying to keep it crushed by her esophagus. After what seemed like days she swallowed it and felt it try to burst free of her stomach.

Gritting her teeth as they oozed clear gold ichor she bit and tore another piece from the living thumping fleshthing in front of her. Each time she sunk her hands and teeth into it the process became easier and the flesh stopped fighting back, instead melting and flowing freely down her throat.

There was no time here and Abigail's stomach should have burst with how much she had devoured but she didn’t stop fighting to take in as much as she could.

She became infinite in her hunger and through sheer rage and determination ate her way to the center of the God.

When she broke through into somewhere else she stumbled blindly into the glow of the inner space. It was bigger and brighter than the outside and at the center was an obscene alter, carved with the horrors of sex, war, disease, famine, and death. Endless black eyed death carved in porcelain white. Sleeping on the altar was herself, carved of the same white stone.

When she leaned over her stone simulacrum it opened its black bottomless eyes and smiled at her. She backed away and it lunged for her and they clashed together. The two Abigails fought and she struck her stone self to the floor only for it rip her feet from under her and pin her. When she reached her hands up to fight it off she froze. They were almost see-through and gelatinous veined with crystal and gold blood vessels. Reflected in her counterpart’s black eyes she saw her own, far too big for her head, sunken in a reptilian and fish gilled face.

She soundlessly screamed as the other Abigail’s smile flashed perfect white and she bit into her throat. Everything stopped as she stuttered still and felt the other Abigail freeze as well. When she let her go Abigail refused and instead pulled her close, she cracked and shuddered and struggled but Abigail held her fast even as hot blood poured from her neck.

She felt the moment when they slid together becoming solid and one. It was like being cracked wide open and spilled into a jar that was far too big for her, stretched thin and crumbling she finally collapsed and they coalesced into something else.

* * *

 

 

 

When she opened her eyes she was lying on the floor of Hannibal’s study, his fine Persian rugs cutting into her bare skin. He was right and he was so very wrong.

There was no distinguishing her thoughts and desires from that of The Mother. She knew all, knew much and around and under. She felt the crys of her children calling her from the deeps off of Innsmouth. Pounding their chests and weeping her name in the dead halls of R'lyeh. She knew her husband and their lord lay there dreaming, calling the madness and the worshippers and chaos to them.

All of this she knew and yet she knew what the internet was, who Will Graham was, what strawberry frozen yogurt tasted like.

The infinity of the deeps and the creatures that lay there barely contained didn’t horrify her, it was the comforting dank musk of home. But she also very much wanted to read the rest of Discworld Books she hadn't gotten to yet. She didn’t have to stand but instead the entirety of the earth righted itself under her so that she was on her feet.

Abigail barely had to think it but she knew where to find him. He wasn’t asleep when she ghosted through the solid matter of the floor beside his four poster bed. What she saw in his face delighted her. His terror was delicious and the grin on her face would have peeled the flesh from his cheeks had he been mortal. Hannibal backed away on the bed from her quickly but she eagerly followed him.

“There is nowhere you could run where I couldn’t find you if I wanted to. No place in existence and un-made where you could hide, so come to me instead.”

He stopped and looked down his nose at her defiantly,

“I should have left you to die on that dock.”

She huffed a soft laugh and viciously dug her nails into the meat of thigh,

“I wouldn’t have stayed asleep much longer in that state any way. No matter now because you have aided in my freedom. In a way I am very fond of you.”

He actually paled at that and she brought her bloody fingernails to her lips to suckle them dry,

“I am not fully myself just as Abigail is no longer dreaming. We are a bit of both and something else entirely. I think you will find me much more…agreeable in this form.”

“I am my father’s son and I bow to no one. Especially not ‘k'lth’ntg m’mordeth.”

She laughed at his childish obscenity,

“Gh’letk n'yl e’iio rh’lyr nd.”

He flinched as she pinned him beneath her,

“I like speaking the Old Word. It makes this world tremble deliciously, every syllable is a tsunami somewhere, every inflection an earthquake.”

He held her eyes balefully and she simply laughed at his pretty defiance,

“You know as well as I that I could destroy you even as I am. You cannot hide from me child. But what you don’t know is now I know why you like it here so much. Perhaps an accord can still be reached.”

His face flashed several dripping disgusting eyes before settling peacefully back into his human mask,

“What do you want?”

She pushed his buttoned sleep shirt from his collar and sank her second row of teeth into his collar bone. She lapped up the blood while he fought to remain still,

“Chaos, blood, death, destruction, sex, lust, war, famine, death, literature, five course meals, and the pier right after sunset. I want all the things you want, all the things humans want, and all things.”

He dropped his head back allowing her more purchase and sighed dramatically,

“Very well.”

She ground her hips again him eliciting a low groan as she grabbed him by the back of his neck and continued to enjoy his black oozing blood,

“Good. You like your freedom you can have it. You like Will Graham, who I have half a mind to warn away from you, you can have him. You want this earth to fall to ruin, you can have that as well. Just remember who gave you these things and who fucks you body and soul for the rest of eternity and we have an agreement.”

He thrashed under her but she laughed as she grabbed his cock and squeezed, he bit his lip hard enough to draw more blood as she scraped the head, she swooped in to lick and kiss the blood deeper into his mouth.

He growled in rage back at her and it shook the entire manor. She ruthlessly spread him open for her and impaled herself upon him while thrusting deep into him with her many fingers writhing and hot. He tried to hold back the screams but with every pounding thrust of her tendrils and grind of her hips he was trapped and arched up helplessly under her.

She laughed airily at his fruitless struggle and pulled him wider, went deeper and faster panting as they both fought and fucked as the world shimmered and warped like heat waves above summer pavement.  

When he came inside her she slipped her many limbs from him and rode him through it until his sides bled from the tracks of her fingernails and she roared in climax. Reality shuddered and bent as she righted both of them, her naked and half draped off of him.

Hannibal ignored her and stared stoically out into the darkness beyond his house’s walls. She wanted to tell him to get over himself but she held her tongue. They had millennia to work out his daddy issues and the grudge/lust they had for each other.

Plus they had a world full of squishy meatsack playthings. One of them with a lovely sort of madness slumbered right now down the hall and dreamed of the halls of some Escher-esque under water city long ago left to the Deep Ones. He would wake up and be unable to sleep for another twelve days. He was her paramour’s but all she had to do was desire William Graham and he would be hers, any man would be hers. It took a little bit of the fun out of it to be honest. She would enjoy fucking the angry mostly-unwilling creature half under her much more.

Let him pout, she was going to dream of the waves and the day when nothing but blood red sky and torrid green sea remained in the entire Universe. The day when she would be Queen.


End file.
